A Knox County Health Department senior health official who for years has been an adjunct faculty member at UT will be moving into a permanent role at the university. Kathy Brown, currently director of community assessment and health promotion at the Knox County Health Department, has been appointed clinical associate professor and director of the Master of Public Health Program in the Department of Public Health

Forty states—including Tennessee—are already experiencing widespread and increasing influenza infections this season, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Paul Erwin, head of UT’s Department of Public Health, offers three simple tips that can go a long way in protecting you from getting or spreading the flu.

UT will help chart the direction of academic public health education, thanks to membership in a newly formed organization that launches today. The university has signed on as a founding member of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health. The organization connects public health schools and programs accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health.

A mother’s prolonged use of antibacterial soaps containing the chemical triclocarban may harm nursing babies, according to a recent UT study. The study, which was conducted on rats, showed that exposure to the compound may reduce the survival rates of babies. Rebekah Kennedy, a graduate student pursuing a dual master’s degree in public health and nutrition, and Jiangang Chen, an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health, presented the results this month at the Endocrine Society’s 95th Annual Meeting.

Paul Campbell Erwin, professor and head of the Department of Public Health, considers John Snow’s cholera investigations one of the foundations of modern epidemiology. He will discuss Snow’s work at this Friday’s Science Forum. The Science Forum is a weekly brown-bag lunch series during which professors and area scientists discuss their research with the general public in a conversational presentation.

Why is it so difficult to reform our health care system? David Mirvis, adjunct professor of public health, has some insight. The professor, investigator, and analyst will speak on three occasions to the UT and broader community.

Paul Erwin, professor and director of public health, has the big idea of using research to make communities healthier. His Public Health Grand Rounds program focuses on practice-based research to improve the public’s health. PHGR is an activity of UT’s Department of Public Health and Knox County Health Department’s formal partnership called the Academic Health Department.